Claude LaVern Cripe, born 1892 - Part 4

[ NOTE - The following is transcribed from an audiotape recording made by Claude LaVern Cripe on July 4, 1967.]

[ PART 4 OF 6 ]

1910


I worked a few weeks at Ladells and then I traveled on. I wanted to get to Grampa Sheffler’s place. So I got on a freight train and went on into Portland, and from there I uh, we stayed around Portland several - oh, a couple of days I guess.


And then I went down to Salem where, that was the last address that I had of my Grampa Sheffler. And uh, I got there and I went to the uh, land office, because he had taken up a claim, homestead there, in Oregon somewhere, and they had no record of him. So the fella at the claim office told me to come home with him and he would see if he could find my grandfather. Well, he put a ad in the paper for Mister Sheffler, and a few days later some girl that used to be a school chum of my Aunt Myrtle who was one year younger than me, came to the house and told him where to find, uh, Myrtle Sheffler’s place, which was my grandfather’s place.


So we found out that they lived in Eugene - out of Eugene – about, uh, 19 miles at a place called Elmira Oregon. So I went on from there to El – to Eugene. I got up on the tender of the Shasta Limited and there I met a friend. Heh! We became friends and he went to Eugene, got off at Eugene with me, went to my grandfather’s place. We went back to Eugene, got a job for a lawyer clearing a ten ac - ten acre patch of fir for a orchard - he wanted to put in an orchard on his mother’s property. We worked that summer, and made two or three trips out to Elmira to see grampa and gramma.


That Fall we started back east and it was in October when we left, beginning to get pretty chilly. And, we tried to make as good a time as possible. And we finally landed up in Muscatine Iowa again, and both of us -- --

[a little bit cut off at end of SIDE 1 on my copy of the tape - Don]


[SIDE 2]


-- This was in 1911 and I went to work then in Detroit for my uncle, Henry Sheffler, who was uh, uh resurfacing, uh, flagstone sidewalks, and sometimes putting in cement sidewalks. I worked that Summer until July or, then I went to North Liberty to see my grandfather.


And, I got acquainted with a a girl down there in North Liberty by the name of Maybelle Ort. And she took me out fishing, and that settled my sidewalk business in Detroit. I stayed and went to work in North Liberty on the railroad. And that Fall - this was 1912 then - that Fall, her and I got married along about November the 26th of 1912.


(Now I’ll have to stop here a little bit, and uh, find out how much more is recordable….)


This is Grampa Cripe again. I’m gonna start a little recording here. As of today, I am 75 years old.


In 1913 I started to work on the Wabash railroad as a brakeman. In 1922 I was promoted to conductor. Some of the experiences that I had on this railroad are very enjoyable, some, not so good.


For instance, at Dillon Indiana we had an engine there by the name of Shelly Greek, was smashed slammed bang right square into a bunch of box cars sittin’ on the main line, and the first one that was next to the engine that we slammed into, was Borden condensed milk. The roof smacked right down on top of the locomotive and, we had all jumped except the engineer. That was the day the milk run all over the front of the engine, boy, believe me! And they had the Peru Wrecker come up from, uh, Peru up over the wheeling of Lake Erie and we had the Montpelier Wrecker from Montpelier Ohio, to clean up this wreckage.


Uh, I had many happy experiences about working on local, never nothing come close to uh, uh being uh, tragic but we did have many many many little wrecks that uh we cleared up and uh, nothing happened too bad.